In a development that should make every horse operation in Kentucky stand up and take notice, trainer Chad Brown will pay $1.6 million to cover back wages, liquidated damages and civil penalties for what the Department of Labor (“DOL”) considers to be willful violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and the H-2B non-immigrant visa program. More >

In 2015 and 2016, the Obama administration’s Department of Labor (“DOL”) released proposed and final rules that were set to dramatically change the face of overtime exemptions by raising the threshold salary requirement to around $47,500. The Final Rule became effective as of December 1st, 2016, but several contemporaneous events have worked to upend the new regulation, and changes are afoot even now with respect to overtime. It’s time to take a quick look at the status of overtime regulations. More >

The impending change to federal overtime regulations has been put on hold by the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas. The court granted a nationwide preliminary injunction against the Department of Labor’s implementation of the rule, as the rule faces challenges from 21 states. More >

The Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued the long-awaited Final Rule on overtime exemptions on Wednesday, May 18, 2016, providing hard numbers and a plan for incremental increases to the “white collar” salary exemption. More >

The Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) has always provided for liquidated damages for violations, but in the past, the Wage and Hour Division (“WHD”) generally pursued the liquidated damages only when forced to litigate. Liquidated damages are effectively punitive in nature and amount to the full amount of back wages, doubling the hit to employers who find themselves in such a predicament. In recent years, however, the WHD has steadily increased the frequency with which it assesses these damages, which proves to be double the burden on employers. More >

The timeline for adoption of the Final Rule of proposed changes to the white collar overtime exemption has been hard to pin down. In early November of 2015, Solicitor of Labor M. Patricia Smith, during a panel discussion at the American Bar Association’s Labor and Employment Law Conference in Philadelphia, mentioned that the proposed changes would not be issued until late 2016, leading many to believe that they would not take effect until 2017. Later that month, the Department of Labor (“DOL”) Wage and Hour Division estimated that the rule would be published in July 2016, not quite as late as earlier implied. Then, Labor Secretary Thomas Perez stated in December in an interview with Bloomberg BNA that it seemed likely to him that the new rule would be out by spring of 2016. In February of 2016, Smith reiterated the Wage and Hour Division’s projected timeline of a July 2016 publication with an effective date 60 days later. On March 14th, 2016, the Department of Labor made the surprising move of sending its overtime rule to the White House Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”), which means that all bets are off and the rule may here sooner than predicted. More >